At this point, however, we may be met with an objection which has been presented with considerable skill, and appears to have seriously affected the judgment of inquirers. It is asserted that, after all, our Lord was but a Jewish Rabbi, differing indeed in some remarkable characteristics from other teachers of the synagogue, but only to an extent which may be accounted for, partly by His position and education, and the influence of Essenian principles, partly by peculiarity of nature and gifts which our opponents admit to have been of the highest order, marking Him, as they would say, as a man of transcendent genius, one of the few in the world's history in whom men are compelled to recognise a master of the soul. Hebrew writers of great learning, by whom this notion is gladly accepted, in their efforts to establish it have done signal if unwitting service to our cause. They have enabled readers of general culture and unbiassed judgment to ascertain for themselves some important facts which were formerly known thoroughly to those only who had sufficient learning and leisure to enable them to penetrate into the depths of Rabbinical literature, the most intricate and repulsive which human labour ever produced. It is now comparatively easy to ascertain what was the true character of the Jewish Rabbi, and of Rabbinical teaching; what, too, was the special character of the Essenian teaching,[165] at and about the period when our Lord impressed His stamp upon the mind of man. Now I would challenge any controversialist to deny that our Lord's teaching differed from that of all the Rabbis, not merely in degree, but in kind. It differed in principle, in its processes, in its results, in its tone, its spirit, in every essential characteristic. This was felt at once by His hearers: the first and most abiding impression made upon the mass of His countrymen was that He taught _not_ as the scribes. This was the secret of the attraction which drew and retained disciples. "_Where_ shall we go? _Thou_ hast the words of eternal life." This was the cause of the fierce antagonism on the part of the Rabbis. They felt that His system was incompatible with their own. The scribe, as such, was a mechanical instrument; his authority was that of the system under which he worked, he held the minds of his hearers bound down and crippled by fetters by which he was himself bound even more tightly. Properly speaking, he was not even an interpreter of the law, with the principles of which he was little concerned, but simply a referee on points of casuistry or of formal observance which had been settled in past ages. The one merit which he claimed was that of unswerving adherence to the old customs, the old interpretations, the old applications of the law. Of all disqualifications for the office of a scribe, the most fatal would be independence of spirit, originality of thought or feeling. Many sayings of the Rabbis express